Human Trafficking Speech - Free Essay Example

Human trafficking is a wicked trapto betwisted in. It is absolutely awful, the way traffickers treat victims, what victims go through on a daily basis just to survive. Im sure youve heard of this. Youve heard the stories of the survivors, the mental challenges they had to face and still face today. You know what the damages are to the victims. You wonder how any human being with a sense of self would be able to treat someone the way traffickers treat victims. What you havent heard about is the traffickers mental status, what they go through when they traffic someone. Thats what Im here to tell you about: why the traffickers traffic, what goes through their mind, and if they care at all how theyre treating another human being. What goes on in a traffickers mind while trafficking someone? Well, I cant exactly tell you, because Ive never been a trafficker. What I can tell you, though, is how they choose their victims. There are several ways, some depending on their societal role, a nd others on their personal struggles. When it comes to personal struggles, addiction is extremely helpful in keeping a victim in the trafficking industry. Substance abuse is helpful because the traffickers will supply drugsin order tobreak a resistance one might have to them so they can coerce the victims into doing what they please. When the victim is dependent on a substance, and the trafficker is the dealer, the trafficker can use that to his advantage to have the victim do what he wants. Mental healthhas a vulnerabilityin itself and people with mental health problems are an easy target. Many mental illness patients cant assess risk and detect ill-intentions, (www2.gov.bc.ca, What Makes Someone Vulnerable to Human Trafficking?) and the traffickers benefit from this because the victims are susceptible to anything the trafficker says. When it comes to societal role, there are several different reasons a trafficker will choose a certain victim. The main one is gender. Most of th e time, traffickers will go after women. They do this because women are more emotionally driven, making them more susceptible. Women will push away intuition if they believe that the man is really in love with them. Poverty is another one. Poor people are easier targets because they need money, and traffickers play on that, promising the victim plenty of money from a job they want them to take. The poor people believe them because they are in such need of money and food and clothes and a roof over their head without worrying about what theyre spending, that they listen to the traffickers. These are things that traffickers look at when choosing a victim. The same way there are several ways to bring a victim in, there are several ways that a trafficker justifies himself in his own mind. The first way is known as distortion. Distortion is twisting the situation to fit an idea of what is acceptable. For example, instead of calling victims of labor trafficking slaves they might call them workers or volunteers. Rationalization is a beautiful lie that traffickers tell themselves. As an example, lets go back to the victims of labor trafficking. They might rationalize it by saying, Oh, they need the job, or Were helping them with work, or Its better than them being on the street with nothing,. Social comparisons are traffickers friends. They will defend themselves by saying something related to, I treat them better than this other trafficker, its better that I got them, rather than that guy. Blame shifting is a great way tojustifyoneself, and traffickers use it. By blaming someone else, the sin is no longer their responsibility to deal with. For example, Its not my fault that I trafficked this woman. She followed my every move and I couldnt stop myself from taking her in the most intimate way and letting all of my friends along with people who paid me do the same without her consent. Another way tojustifywhat they are doing is by dehumanizing the victims. This on e is a popular one. All the trafficker has to do is view them as inferior and deserving of exploitation and automatically, they are no longer human, but rather an objectto beplayed with. It sounds insane, but traffickers honestly think like this tojustifytheir actions. Now, that weve heard about the justifications in a traffickers mind, the question is, Do they ever have real remorse? And the truth is, I cant answer that question. Ive never picked the brain of a trafficker, Ive never come into contact with one. My opinion? I believe that some do. Maybe after they realize the damage that theyve caused, then they do have remorse and regret what they did. However, I dont believe that every trafficker feels bad about what hes doing. Another question raised was, Do traffickers care about victims at all? The answer to that question is the same as the previous one. I cant answer, because I dont know. I do believe, though, that human nature crawls underneath their skin and pushes them t o care for at least one or two victims, but it depends on the trafficker. In addition to believing this, I also believe that the reason traffickers try tojustifythemselves is because they know what theyre doing is wrong, and because they want to have a reason to put forth in court if they are ever caught. But without ever being caught, why do traffickers try tojustifytheir actions to themselves? Its a question that everyindividualmust answer for themselves. Maybe someone asked them why theyre doing it, and the trafficker cant answer in the moment, so he justifies it in his mind later on. Or perhaps its something more, perhaps its his subconscious telling him hes doing something wrong, so he tries to tell himself that theres a good reason for it. Or, it could be, that its a built-in moral compass that hes trying to force into a direction hes not headed. No one actually knows, except for the trafficker justifying it to himself. The most we can hope for is that the built-in moral co mpass is stronger than the mind of the trafficker, and wins the battle of what is right and wrong, bringing the trafficker to justice in the process.